Cyberbaguioboy

I read this story today and wondered why people still go to malls despite today’s inflation rates and dubious eVAT charges? Anecdotal evidence points to several reasons. One of them is that people go there to cool. Due to lack of public parks to mill around, they would rather go to malls and stay there for a while, or until the traffic jam winds down. It is a cheap thrill, don’t you think? In Filipino, we call this a “tambayan.”

Excerpt from the story:

The Southeast Asian country has three of the world’s 10 largest shopping centers, two of them in the capital, Manila. Scores of others, ranging from modern glass and steel structures to older, fading buildings, dot cities across the archipelago.

Although over 40 percent of the country’s 90 million people live on $2 or less per day, malls here are crowded at all times, and especially packed at weekends.

Around 80 percent of the Philippines’ population go to shopping centers and around 36 million people visit shopping plazas once or twice a month, according to Nielsen Media Research.